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a terrible painter, a dreamer, a rebel , a feminist and a self certified bisexual Witch. Who is always trying to visualize whats on the other side of the canvas she paints,just another human- Living alive Life. Now also a green tea addict.

Monday, 29 February 2016

Every day, health journals, newspapers, e-papers, magazines,
blogs, micro-blogs, tumblr and infinite other portals publish pieces about
physical well-being. The infamous The Awkward Yeti, has taken it upon himself to
simplify the human body with art. In this age of acute health care system and
personal development and hyper awareness about body, some humans take their
bodies for granted, they would have been happier had medical science stuck to
the treatment of humours.

Let’s face the easy facts, exercise is tough, giving upon on
post-sunrise sleep is hardest. Our generation may be, has the perfect balance between
health conscious crazy mode and hardcore lazy mode. Yes, we wish that our
weight count would drop with each new ‘like’ increase on our Facebook post.
Again the truth is, we have to drag our minds and butts too fix this lacuna in
our mood swings. We might eat the street food, but we try to balance it out
with green tea. Our generation is the dough that gets kneaded in this constant
battle between health and laziness. I may not be the best example of health
conscious soul, but I try to keep my own-self happy. But
today is not a day
where I rant about my body, I am nicely packed in a small frame with curves to
kill my enemy.

I am here to rant about the generation that raised us and
the generation that preceded us by ten years. For this two generation I don’t need
to stalk people on trains or cafes, I can simply peep through my whatsaap and
find the examples sitting on my new phone screen.

I have an extremely lazy elder sister, a delicate but
cunning brother-in-law, a crazy mother and borderline insane father and lunatic
grandparents. And me? Well I am never claiming normalcy. This bloodline that I
carry has never typed itself as normal.

My family, almost all of my family loves food. My sister and
I are the two humans who are the picky eaters. Each member has blessed fingers
for cooking and no matter how ill interested my skinny grandmother appears
while cooking, we can bet the simple dal she makes tastes heavenly. My grandpa
has magic fingers when it comes to mashing things up together, he would mash
boil potato, eggs, rice and ghee. Then he would mix them with a pinch of salt
into dense balls and feed us. My uncle has great talent with cutting vegetables
and cooking pork. My mom, had she been born in the baking nations of Europe,
could have had her own warmly, butter-chocolate smelling bakery. On other hand,
the second laziest human on earth my dad, when forced into my mom shoes and
kitchen and tied with apron fairs pretty well with his cooking skills. My
brother-in-law is an added asset to this family of cooks, he will inherit all the
traditional family recipes. My sister the laziest human on earth has inherited the skills of
great cooks, but can surpass the whole family with her fast cooking skills when
time is pressing.

So in this family of conscious and unconscious foodies, the
question of health is proportional to the wealth we carry under our skins. My
grandfather and grandmother perceive me as an immortal victim of 1933 feminine.
My father no matter how much expanded and shaggy I was, always found “Shukna-Shukna”
(dry-dry, rather juiceless). Our bloodline has history of gaining weight, hell
we never produced skinny humans except for two species. But eventually we turn into pumpkins post-thirties
and then turn into snake gourd in our old age.

This family has history of serious ailments, three
generation of diabetics, three family member from same generation suffered from cancer, my grandmother is the sole proud survivor. My dad bought in case of
weak heart and nerves, my grandfather bought week immunity and my brother-in-law is a
constant victim of hay fever. I was a weakling, my immunity towards cold things
is nil and my mother is a moving sack of ailments these days, the only
strongest we have, is the satan of the house.

Honestly I have no sympathy for my parents who returned from
a twenty-three days long medical honeymoon. My mom championed herself as a strong
heart, she is fit, she is fine bla and bla. Now twenty three days later we know
well the truth is far from it. A hearing aid can sum it all up for her. On other hand
my insane father is always worried about his health. People may wonder why I have
no sympathy for the old fellow. Well he smoked like a chimney, bought himself a
heart attack fifteen years back. After that his inner soul woke up to the cause of
health, a bloody little too late!

My father has all sort of wrong information and notion of exercise,
he walks on wrong time of the day, does yoga on the precise time when it’s strictly
forbidden and morphs into his own nutritionist almost fainting himself once with his boiled vegetable dishes!

My mom, is a classic woman, who forgets her blood pressure
medication, has no worries about her health despite being overweight which has
been causing fire in my brain. She is unmindful, disinterested and at times turns into a walking ghost of Vriginia Woolf in the house. The only thing that keeps her
concentrated are the silly cat and happy bitch. Walking Miley every day might
have kept her from tumbling into the well of heart diseases. She stands at borderline for multiple ailments.

Then comes the evil couple, no matter how round my elder
sister becomes, my brother-in-law finds her to be perfect hourglass! May be I need
to force him to check his eyes or he is watching from the wrong side of telescope. That sister of mine carries the same psyche
that our mother and I do. We are not ill until and unless we are smashed in our
guts and thrown to bed. I know being ill is irritating, and talking about
illness is really depressing. A major reason I cant continue talks with my
father these days is because, the senile man brings everything to death. You
are allowed to think about your and other’s death, it’s a free country till date.
But no one is allowed to dampen our happy spirit. My dad is a total mismatch
for the family.

So my sister, who in next three years will turn into a
blueberry like Violet from Charlie and Chocolate factory, really has hard skin
like jackfruit. Every other night on phone I yell, I beg, I shout, I lament, to
her. I ask her to lose weight but the lazy woman yawns it off. I may sound, sexist, body-prejudiced, fat-shaming, creepy,
ugly soul who hankers after slim body. Honestly I am not. I am not a champion
of body shaming or size-zero trend. Let’s face the problem, keeping one’s
weight in control is a must these days, Huffington Posts, Womenshealth, Cosmopolitan, The New York Times are few to write about health regularly. If we can check on our weight, we may reduce the
chances of harboring many illnesses. I am no medical expert, skinny people
suffer from heart attack, beautiful people to have kidney failures, non-smokers
have lung cancer. But why would I make sure that my body becomes a farming
ground of disease without looking after it, like my mom and dad did and certain someone who is taking that path.

My dad complains of expensive medicines; my reply has been constantly
heartless- The once smonke money, is now spent on repairing the damage left by sooth. My
mom avoided doctors because she hates taking medicines and hates sitting for so many tests. For lest ten years,
I have been pushing my parents to have a full body checkup, not only my parents but my grandparents too. I may sound a very
concern daughter. In honesty I am afraid of being orphaned in my twenties, with the
way things are unfolding with my silly parents, I am scared.

I care, I worry and that makes me cruel and blunt. If I had my way, I
would drag my sister out of her home by her non-existent butt and make her skip,
she is an expert with skipping rope. I would drag my brother-in-law and make
him take trips through healing springs, dips in hot-water springs and sauna baths. I would force my
father to a nutritionist, a psychologist and some post-retirement hobby club, and
I would definitely admit my mom to a physio-therapy farm that would make her
body aches go away. I would make my skinny as stick grandparents sit through check ups every month despite their pride protesting.

But all this would happen in an alternate
universe, because this family has a crazy sense of will power for all the wrong
reasons which even our pets exercise. And among this lot of crazies! I am puniest of all.

P.S- By the way Leonardo DiCaprio won his Oscar at last! But for the wrong film.

Monday, 15 February 2016

February tickles in and the new year spirit leaves us with
the gloomy bloom. It’s the month of love or in other words the most profitable
month for the card makers, soft toy sellers and restaurants. Love either
overflows or dries a human heart for first fifteen days of this small month. I who am
in love with the idea of love finds imaginary wings growing out from my toes in
this month. For years now my friends and I we have been gifting each other
chocolates on valentine’s day. We can blame this flaw of ours easily on the Japanese and
Korean rom-coms we grew up watching. My once walking mate and now my partner in quest of self love, turns
into over-feminized creatures in this month with me.

Valentine’s day is a big event in the life of loveless. By
loveless I simply mean the love that comes from a lover. My family is strictly
forbidden to enter my non-existent love life and express their suffocating love
to me to counter my loveless comment. I love wearing red on this day, and my sister out of pity got me a red
dress, because well the only colours I have in my wardrobe is blues and blues,
occasional greens and standard blacks. Last year my valentine's day was bore, with no
human around to even have a coffee party with, lets forget a single praise for my red
attire. This year I simply wanted a red dress and look pretty. And I did look
pretty, but not Valentine’s day.

On last Tuesday, my mate was busy changing her display
picture and sharing stupid love quotes on her Facebook wall. On other hand I
was busy walking down broken paths of Spring-fair (this fair is miniature,
rather minuscule version of the Winter festival that I spoke about in my
December post). On last Sunday we had a department picnic, where I enjoyed a
lot and ate a lot. Thanks to the picnic I could not attend the prime time of
the fair, that was also on Sunday. Two days before that very picnic I realized,
rather my femme fatale self discovered calendar and found valentine also fell
on a bloody Sunday. Hence I chose to be bloody pretty on my picnic day.

But on that Tuesday I decided to walk past the remnants of
the fair with my over-feminized zeal. My main thought was to eat Mathura-cakes
(Indian version of donuts). Sadly, there was only one shop and the cakes had
gone sour. On that very day I realized my elder sister who is blessed with
strange sense of gifting was buying me a bank robber’s mask! Though it’s called
a biker’s mask, it is in truth a prop used by criminals.

As I kept roaming around the fair and haggling with trinket
sellers, my mom called me. The funny question being, “Why are you alone again?”
like she doesn’t know, I am an ambivert. But then came the knockout punch “It’s
almost valentine! You are forever single! What will you do this year? Dress up again and hope for a rose?” she was
smirking I could feel it. I was already pouting, and I could see every other
human who knew me asking the same question. “One day I shall have a lover” my
brain yelled and maybe I should carry a signboard, ‘happily alone till then’.

After the call ended, I was stuffing my mouth with
chocolates that I have been buying at random since end of January. That’s when
smell of pickle bought me back to a request made by my object of affection. A
one sided imaginary love affair with no future, in nutshell. Very meekly I was
asking price of pickles, since I had no idea how to buy them. The grumpy pickle seller almost pickled me, but in the end I was
carrying garlic and ginger pickle. And I was smelling like pickle too.

The evening was growing dark and my sweet tooth was far from
satisfied. Finally, my eyes fell on the upturned magical creation of sugar. In
pink, orange, blue and white. I am a human who loves happy endings, at times
really cute things she has no use of. Over all I am a
girl, my object of affection happily fails to see it, my friends see me as a
weird human and my mirror is so small I fail to see below my neck, at times I end up wondering what’s below my neck. So since my childhood my mom let me indulge in
one luxury that was cotton candy. Sadly, I could never finish one. But, once
upon a time cotton candy sellers bought them in tiny packs and I relished them.

But last Tuesday, I decided to accomplish the impossible! I
bought myself a cotton candy. With my trinket and pickle bag I sat myself on
the dais. Next moment my face was hidden in the pink hole of nothingness. I bit
and it melted, I chewed it vanished, yet it refused to recced in size. Younger
girls came in groups and gave me curious looks, the elder couples were in a way
perplexed at why I was sitting alone on the dais and ripping apart a pink
universe like a hungry feline. Few vagabond children really found my endeavor funny and chose to
laugh at my comic act. Only I knew how hard it was for me to finish the whole
creation.

Now the couples came, I don’t know if it’s my face or my
small structure that makes people pity me. They really felt bad that I had no
friends with me. They have full right to feel pity for me, but they can utter
their thoughts after they walk past me and not when they are standing in front of me.
But they had no sense of space and kept their talks up and I chose to browse
through Huffington Post’s articles on Valentine’s day. In next fifteen minutes
my twitter was crowded with links from Boredpanda and Huffington Post. Yet the
couples refused to vanish from my vision nor did my cotton candy reduce in size.
But I kept my struggle intact. At last when the first glimpse of night rose up.
I was holding a stick and the pink hole revolving inside my tummy and annoying lovers gone. I had
attained another impossible task after nineteen years of struggle. I returned
to my room glorious and proud smelling like pickle!

And today, I think my love for love is very much like cotton
candy. I can see its size, I can try to eat it, but it’s not going to be easy
or fluffy journey like Mills and Boons. But again like Chekov’s love obsessed
characters, I too feel and think like them, may be I am behaving like them too- “so what if the person I desire doesn’t love
me back, I can’t stop myself, but love them”. It’s better to share chips, eat chocolates and watch rom-com with someone who cares about us as a friend despite love being an impossible destination. Its more than better, not because we want them
forever, but because we get to share moments with them and that make us who we
are, Believers.

P.S- Now in my case can I stop believing in happiness?
Probably never.

Wednesday, 3 February 2016

Every time I walk inside Kolkata’s New Market, I feel like
Alice in wonderland. There are bags, shoes, junk jewelries, food and most
importantly an exhibition of funky under garments. Here are these men standing
out with their blushes, bluntness and brutish looks, selling brassieres,
camisoles, boy-shots, stockings of unimaginable colours, materials and patterns.

With every visit, I stalk them, I have this acute desire to
grab those cute creations and cuddle them to my heart's content. But till this date I have been too
shy, lazy and in-doubt about buying those inexpensive cups of desire and I blame it on the elitist shopaholic gene that dominates me. My father had induced in me the
idea of expensive clothes being best for our body and my mother and sister too
believe in the same faith.

A year back on one such shopping spree, when I was dazzled
by the weapons of mass destruction upturned, hanging and giggling at twilight, my sister pulled me inside one of the undergarments showroom. Every other boring and super-expensive product was
available there. As we stepped in, we found the showroom packed, salesgirls were
busy opening boxes and justifying the price, the quality and explaining the benefit of their products.

My sister left me to find the absolute necessities on her
list made back in home. Soon a salesgirl found me and I was already asking for
black-bras in all designs and without back hooks, if possible. To this demand
she gave me a look that suggested I was borderline insane, only sport-bras came
without back hooks. While she busied herself with pulling down boxes, a really
beautiful mother-daughter duo stood beside me. They reminded me of
mother and daughter from clinic plus ads. In few moments I could totally
understand the reason why they were standing beside me.

Obvious reason was they too wanted undergarments,
but the main reason was the girl was a pre-teen cycling on puberty and her mom
had bought her to buy her trainer bra. The girl reminded me of a younger me, she
was grumpy and really not communicating with her mother. It was written on her
face that she was against the idea of wearing a bra be it trainer or not. My
mom too had dragged me to the shop, to buy my first bra, I was fourteen and was desperately
trying to pass camisoles as my bestfriend. So this pre-teen was all grumpy and
I could totally connect to her thoughts without even looking in her marble
eyes. The salesgirl was showing her all the boring colours that existed in the
world.

Though in general I stick to the universal colour black, I
have a personal hatred towards white brassiers. I find them vulgar, a
colourless creation which makes me feel vulnerable! When the salesgirl popped up
a white trainer bra I could see the child pop a vein on her forehead. Her
gorgeous mother was too, a little in a pinch. “Thode khush karne walle colours
dikhaye na” (Show some happy colours) she kept repeating. But that salesgirl
was showing them lacy, cotton, semi-cotton bras but all in white and bloody
off-white!

My sister on other hand was collecting a rainbow of
undergarments and my salesgirl was unable to find me a single 34b, because it was such a
common size that, demand curve was always higher than supply curve. Now the
mother had started asking for pretty coloured boy-shots and I could see the
girl taking an interest. The woman was really a friendly and outspoken mom, I never found my mother
actually calling undies cute out loud. Here was this diva like mom almost yelling in excitement “LOOK! Isn’t that pretty, you love pink beta! We have orange and look red too”
the child was little embarrassed. Meanwhile my salesgirl was trying to
shove me with 32c and 36a. I wanted to snap her neck, she wanted to me squeeze
into a smaller size and next moment make my lovely bounty shag in a sack. The child lost
her interest and flared up again when a white sports-bra was placed on the counter
and the salesgirl praising that hideous thing.

trust me they were pretty, my art is crappy...

The teen and me we both wanted to kill our salesgirls. Her
mother was almost convinced by theirs’s that this was the perfect bra for the
child. So called made of cotton, white, full-busted with elastic bands, as soon as my
eyes absorbed the image, my own anger against the world from my
fourteen-year-old self burst forth. “Don’t buy that, that’s a terrible
beginners bra” I spoke. Both salesgirls were glaring at me now.

That white devil came with elastic that clung to the skin,
the clothe never absorbed sweat or let air pass, the bands never loosened up,
there were no adjustment options nor did it stop suffocating after using it for
three weeks and tortured the developing bounty. The worst part of it was the
elastic which came with semi-circular pattern that cut through the delicate skin under the bounty. The small cups never fitted well either! It was
perfect tool to make a puberty stricken person suffer more and make them go
crazy. Unsurprisingly one was left with rashes for days. I spoke about each and
every flaw that particular hazardous creation had. The child was so happy that
I proved all her fears true and the salesgirls really wanted to shoot me down. I
had to save the pre-teen because my mom was convinced that this bra was ‘the one’ for
me. I suffered terribly with it for a month.

Out of the blue my salesgirl suddenly found a 34b black, forced it in my hand. “Madame please, eta pore dekhun trial roome” (Please try
this on in the trial room) she almost threatened me. Meanwhile the elder
shopaholic was back and looking at me and was wondering why was I holding one bra. “You are advising that I should not buy
this one for her?” the beautiful mother asked. “I am requesting, don’t buy that,
go with something less restricting and this white one bites, trust me my mom
bought it once, I had rashes for days” I smiled. The woman understood only to
turn around at the salesgirl who was back to box hunting fiercely.

After being in queue for a while, I was finally trying my
34b inside the trial room. It was not fitting right, when I re-checked the tag,
the salesgirl was trying to pass me a 34c. Size matters the most to me, I
was back to my position and glaring holes at the salesgirl. My sister was there doing her calculation, the mother-duo were gone
when I looked around. “Yup they left and they thanked you, they found pretty
trainers while you were trying yours” my sister informed. “Good, I saved two
innocent babies from an abusive relationship” I almost yelled out at my salesgirl.
“That didn’t fit right?” my sister asked waving the empty 34c box at me and I
nodded.

“Well if you are not buying any from here, we might look at
the ones they are selling out on the road for you” though we laughed and walked
past the vendors that evening, till this day I haven’t bought those pretty colourful upturn cups on the road. One day I shall stuff my closet with colourful bras, till then I have to stick to 34b black beauties.

P.S- this post happened because of Women's Web's blog competition. Celebrate yourself with a perfect fit. Take the Buttercups quiz @ http://bit.ly/buttercupsquiz and get that perfect fit you deserve. Use GYRF10 to avail a 10% discount. & #PerfectFit

Simply Witchy Me

All I can describe myself is, I am a Tame Less Tempest, Aim-Less Learner, never aware of what I want.
Born Blank, Raised Ordinary, Lived Ignorant, BUT CATCHING UP my life is a celebration of Books, Friendship, Solitude, Observation, Education and Curiosity.
My life is a toast to living without guilt"- hence I am still Clue Less of what I want.